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Hart’s analysis makes the case for greater transparency at all levels of government, the elimination of subsidies—with the exception of low-carbon energy and technology, the alignment of climate policy with China’s trade stance, and inclusion of the Chinese public on climate policy debates.

China’s new emissions trading scheme (ETS) may set the country on a path to achieving its goals outlined in the Paris Agreement, but concerns regarding effective emissions cuts have raised questions about the efficacy of the new policy. In December of 2017, China launched its national greenhouse gas emissions trading market, creating the world’s largest […]

China steps up on climate change and United States steps down In the wake of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s reelection, the Communist Party of China has begun to take steps to realize Xi’s vision of China as an authoritative power on the world stage, adeptly exploiting the vacuum created by a lack of US leadership […]

Full Bio

Craig Hart is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center and a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University’s Energy Policy and Climate program, where he teaches one of the few university-level carbon management courses. Previously, he was based in Beijing as the ENN associate professor at the School of Environment and Natural Resources at Peoples University of China, where he continues to serve as an adjunct professor teaching corporate compliance and corporations at Temple University’s China Rule of Law program based at the Tsinghua University School of Law. He has lived and worked in China, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and the former Soviet Union.

Mr. Hart’s research concentrates on the intersection of technology policy and competitiveness, focusing on scaling up clean energy systems and adopting carbon management technologies. His work includes renewables, energy efficiency, smart grid, and carbon capture and storage technologies, with a particular focus on China and developing countries in Asia. He has also advised private and public-sector organizations on renewable energy, smart grid, and carbon management technology for coal-based power generation policies and projects in over two dozen countries in North and South America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

He is the lead author on several publications covering China including the annual Mapping China’s Climate Policies, now in its third year, and others such as Corporate Strategy and Competitive Advantage in China’s War on Pollution: Pursuing the New Chinese Consumer.

In addition to his academic work, Mr. Hart is a practicing attorney in the fields of energy infrastructure project finance, capital markets, and carbon management. His practice includes having practiced with the international law firms White & Case and O’Melveny & Myers. He has represented project developers, companies, lenders, and investors focusing on energy infrastructure, clean energy, and high-technology companies. He also served as counsel to the Asia Development Bank’s future carbon fund, a $115 million fund to finance renewables and carbon reduction projects through credits from the Clean Development Mechanism in Asia and the Pacific.

His public representations include the US Department of Energy (DOE), the US Trade and Development Agency (TDA), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Global CCS Institute, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and various governments.

In the past fifteen years, Mr. Hart has lived and worked in China teaching at both the Temple-Tsinghua Rule of Law Program and People’s University of China focusing on environmental social governance (ESG), along with clean energy technologies, standards and policies, and water and pollution. He has provided consulting to various organizations, including the Chinese Government Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Environment, working collaboratively with the National Development and Reform Commission on projects funded by the US DOE.

Mr. Hart was also a climate law fellow at the Center for International Environmental Law, where he advocated at the UNFCCC and other fora for vulnerable countries facing the impacts of climate change, and served as the coordinating attorney to the government of the Maldives and other members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) in drafting the Male’ Declaration on Human Dimensions of Climate Change. He has prepared studies for the UNFCCC and the Nairobi Framework Partnership on the transitions from the Kyoto I to Kyoto II regimes, and from Kyoto II to the Paris Agreement; conducted negotiation training for developing countries delegations in preparation for international climate negotiations; and written widely on both carbon markets and adaptation challenges, including his 2013 book, Climate Change and the Private Sector: Scaling-up Private Sector Response to Climate Change, published by Routledge.

Mr. Hart earned a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a JD and BA from the University of California at Berkeley, and an MA in economics at New York University. He also studied as a Kathryn Davis Fellow at the Chinese School at Middlebury College.

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